


Road home on our backs

by ThisMessIsAPlace (McFearo)



Series: Son Of A Gun [3]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: And it's Ulysses doing the mentioning so it's not wholly straightforward least of all graphic, Closer to a T rating than M but I'm a cautious man, Ezra analyzing Faulkner, M/M, More experiments in Ulysses Voice, Sex is completely off-screen just mentioned, When will i write something with plot? It is a mystery, Yet more fluff, mild sexual themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: Two shirtless mailmen start a book club in bed.





	Road home on our backs

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2's prompt for the month of fanfic challenge is just "Rarepairs."
> 
> As anything with Ulysses is a rarepair in this fandom, and a man's gotta treat himself sometimes, I seem to have written Ulysses and Ezra cuddling two days in a row.
> 
> Fight Me.

Walker plants a tacky kiss on his hip before he does his belt back up. Rolls over without further ado to dig into the messenger bag on the floor. Ulysses watches, unmoving. Lazy, for a while. Stares at the scar on the Courier's back: precise and baleful, from the nape down past the waistband of his jeans.  
  
Pockmarks from sutures turn it into nearly the same faded lines that bisect the old highways.  
  
_You wanna symbol what means_ me _, then, well,_ the Courier laughed the first time Ulysses trailed fingertips down it -- _none I coulda planned better._  
  
"Cour--" Stops, starts over. "Ezra." Title doesn't mean to him what it used to. But he's spat it with venom enough... he can still use it other places, but not here.  
  
Walker -- Ezra -- twists to look at him in question.  
  
"You need--?" Ulysses starts.  
  
" _Naw_ , naw." Doesn't get to finish the question before Ezra snorts and waves him off. "One-a them days."  
  
Turns away again rather than look him in the eye, like it's his own shameful doing. But he grabs the whole satchel and pulls it up with him rather than keep digging through it blind. In a moment he's shuffled up the bed and settled in shoulder-to-shoulder on Ulysses's right side. Bare to the waist but wanting nothing more than the arm across his back.  
  
The want for touching and being touched, they don't always get that at the same time. Fine enough. They let it pass, move on, try again another day. Some days it all lines up like it was meant for them and they make the best of that. But some days, what Ezra wants and what his body can manage... those don't mesh.  
  
It's the trail's doing, the one on his spine. Says it suits him and maybe means it, in his way. _It_ means more than the look of the thing on his skin. Parting kiss from a scalpel. Memory of being pulled apart without spite or remorse, like a toy -- by worse than children who don't know better than not to care.  
  
Missing pieces were stitched back in again but he didn't come back whole. They've both lived that story twice over, now.  
  
Ezra finds the grimy bottle at the bottom of his bag. Nursed the same one for a week and not half done; oblivion's a risk even he's too responsible to take. Ulysses still wrinkles his nose when it's opened, feels his throat clench with unwarranted sympathy when Ezra swishes the whiskey in his mouth.  
  
Pretending to misinterpret the look, Ezra holds the bottle out to him as he swallows for a second time. Ulysses recoils.  
  
Ezra just laughs. "If it's where my mouth's been, in all fairness, whiskey kills everythin'."  
  
"Good sense in that, surely." Ulysses rolls his eyes. "Kills everything -- why not put it in your _body_."  
  
A louder bark of laughter. The cap goes back on, the bottle in his hand is replaced with a canteen. Water always follows when he drinks, so there's good sense at least in that.  
  
" 'The reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.'"  
  
Ulysses cants his head. Knows from the way the words fall they're not Ezra's, though they sound like him, some way. Gets a battered paperback dropped on his chest by way of an answer.  
  
"Finished readin' it, oh... Jacobstown, as I recall," he explains, measuring time by places and distances, as he does. "Were readin' it again, seein' as I ain't found nothin' to replace it wi' right yet. Only now I think on it, I reckon you two'd get along."  
  
Ulysses lifts the book up with his free hand. The other has since tangled itself into sandy curls without his input. Both past the novelty of gestures like these. Only odd thing about it now is its normalcy, if he lets himself stop to ponder it at all.  
  
Has to squint to read the title through the wear and tear and the dim light. Raises an eyebrow when he manages.  
  
"Got a thing fer tragic irony. So's good ol' Faulkner, you'll find." Ezra grins behind the mouth of his canteen.  
  
"Think I'd like it, you said," Uysses prompts, and cracks it open in his palm with little finger and thumb to check the state of the pages. Not worth the strain to read the summary on what remains of the back cover. But for coffee rings and grimy fingerprints, though, the pages look legible.  
  
"Mite opaque, but you're more than clever 'nuff by half. Cleverer'n me, any rate. They all talks wi' _imagery_ , see? 'Stead of wi' each other, like, an' therein lies jus' oodles of conflict."  
  
"Hm." He waits to hear which part reminds Ezra of him. If he's honest with himself, there's some small bit of vanity in that.  
  
Ezra settles in deeper against his side, weight of him warm, low enough to put his chin against his right shoulder. Body's long and lanky enough his legs stretch out well past Ulysses's. He takes a last gulp of water before closing the canteen and resting it on his stomach. "They mother passes on, an' the one brother, Darl, he says that to his brother Jewel, their mother is a horse. To the littlest one she's a fish -- don' lookit me like that, I weren't the one what wrote it. There's _context_.  
  
"To Darl," he goes on, "she jus' ain't at all no more -- he's got some fair _ex-ist-ential_ ideas, like, 'cause to him once she's gone she like as never were. They all sees it a differn't way an' cain't use words to tell each other how they feel."  
  
He talks with his hands. Cradles his half-formed thoughts in the air in front of them. Describes an idea between the curves of his fingers. "They ma says words shape a concept for people as ain't lived it to try an' unnerstand, an' those as have lived it don't need 'em. 'S an interestin' thought, leastways.  
  
"Think I get Jewel best jus' as difficult as he is, but Darl's closest to my heart, truth to tell. You'll get on wi' him."  
  
"Mm." He closes the book and sets it aside. "Why?"  
  
Ezra turns his head. Put Ulysses in his blind spot again, on his left. Must not have thought about it. "You gonna read it?"  
  
He will. Not now, but he will. "Answer."  
  
He kisses him first instead. Tastes of little after the water. Faint trace of the whiskey, which he dislikes no more or less than he would the taste of himself. Ulysses would tolerate either for this.  
  
Ezra drags out the kiss. Only answers when he's had his fill, settled back down.  
  
" 'How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.'"

**Author's Note:**

> The book in question is _As I Lay Dying_ by William Faulkner, for the three people who didn't have to read it in high school.
> 
> Come tell me what a hack I am on [Tumblr](https://atomicreactor.tumblr.com)!


End file.
